'Kill them': Arizona election workers face midterm threats

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

Source: Reuters

Nov 6 (Reuters) - Election workers in Arizona’s most fiercely contested county faced more than 100 violent threats and intimidating communications in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterms, most of them based on election conspiracy theories promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The harassment in Maricopa County included menacing emails and social media posts, threats to circulate personal information online and photographing employees arriving at work, according to nearly 1,600 pages of documents obtained by Reuters through a public records request for security records and correspondence related to threats and harassments against election workers.

Between July 11 and Aug. 22, the county election office documented at least 140 threats and other hostile communications, the records show. “You will all be executed,” said one. “Wire around their limbs and tied & dragged by a car,” wrote another.

The documents reveal the consequences of election conspiracy theories as voters nominated candidates in August to compete in the midterms. Many of the threats in Maricopa County, which helped propel President Joe Biden to victory over Trump in 2020, cited debunked claims around fake ballots, rigged voting machines and corrupt election officials.



Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/kill-them-arizona-election-workers-face-midterm-threats-2022-11-06/

---

Hopefully, the FBI will identify, arrest, and imprison, (for a very, very long time), all of these fascist terrorists who are threatening to harm election workers.

[certainot]

1. university of arizona and az state broadcast sports on at least 5 RW radio stations that spread thos

those lies. i recently checked out their radio affiliates.

dems should let the schools know. they need to start looking for alternatives.

every advertiser, university, and pro team supporting those stations is responsible

[riversedge]

2. Perhaps email the Univ of AZ and AZ State and let them know. Also the AZ Dem Party.

[certainot]

9. also college papers, Az newspapers. someone should do a story on it. happening all over the country

but i don't know if anyone reads emails to general email boxes.... i had forgotten musk was thinking of buying twitter and i actually thought about joining to make such contact as that might get more attention than email these days.

i think what happens is people at the schools make the mistake of just passing it on to the athletics dept.

[AZLD4Candidate]

26. In Tucson, UA is broadcast on 1450 Sports Radio.

I don't know about Maricopa as I lived in Pima County.

[certainot]

33. if you search for the university team and 'radio affiliates' it usually finds a list of stations

then i usually have to find each station's programming

the fakenewsradio website only has ASU on 1 ex limbaugh station but my last check had it supporting 3 RW stations, and AU on 2

one or more of those stations might reach most of the state

[Diamond_Dog]

3. What is the sheriff's dept. doing to arrest these dangerous freaks? Anything?

[hildegaard28]

4. Threats and attacks against election workers

or any public official or employee should be classified as terrorism. Having that label and the criminal penalties attached to it might actually make the morons think twice before they actually start threatening anyone who works for the governments, whether it's an election worker, a teacher, school board member, etc. They do these things because they know they will get only a slap on the wrist if they're caught. Increase the penalties and attach the terrorism to it will help to stop. We must crack down on this. We should all be calling our representatives and suggesting this to them.

[iluvtennis]

8. + 1.

Welcome to DU @hildegaard28.

[calimary]

18. Welcome to DU, hildegaard28!

It sure sounds like terrorism to me. Terrorism: actions designed to inflict or provoke fear (in other words, terror).

[ancianita]

30. But

they're not classified as such.

Protection of state poll workers starts at state levels.

Threats and intimidation under AZ law ARS 13-1202, ARS 13-404 can be charged as misdemeanors or felonies.


Here are laws of other states.

https://www.brennancenter.org/series/laws-protecting-voters-and-election-workers-intimidation


Welcome to DU.

[dalton99a]

5. Kick

[Irish_Dem]

6. The GOP cannot win honestly, so it must destroy our voting system.

[YoshidaYui]

7. Americans wanting to kill Americans...

Unfucking believable!

[Hotler]

10. Christian Americans. nt

[YoshidaYui]

11. Correction

Noted.

[Hotler]

13. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be an ass, it wasn't meant to be a correction.

Just my thought of what's left in the pan when you boil it down past the abortion issue. Religious nuts forcing their will on us.
Be well.

[YoshidaYui]

14. I don't think Buddhists do that...

I could be wrong …

[Hotler]

19. I don't think they do that and most christians don't either. nt

[vlyons]

22. Buddhists don't do that

We don't engage in violent thoughts, words, or deeds.

[whathehell]

24. Thats nice. but as noted above,

neither do the vast majority of Americans, who would, by the way, identify as " Christian", by either practice or upbringing.

[vlyons]

25. Most Americans, whether religious or not, are decent people.

I think most of us are appalled at the loud ugly degenerate minority.

[whathehell]

28. You are correct, and most, for reasons

of practice or upbringing, would identify as Christians, so do you see the disconnect and the reasons to stop villifying a world religion of Billions?

[whathehell]

27. Oh Noooo...No Buddhist has EVER killed anyone!!

.Could we stop equating a world religion of billions with a TINY subset of Right Wing crackpots?

[whathehell]

23. Right Wing fascists -- not generic "Christians".

Two thirds of those identifying as "Christians" are not -- and do not want to "kill Americans".

[wryter2000]

29. Thank you

I’m about to head out to church.

[whathehell]

32. You are very welcome.

[lambchopp59]

31. WHISIS

?1614717272348

[mjvpi]

38. Great find on the picture.

A reminder that we are, what, 5 or 6 generations removed from the Civil War.

[electric_blue68]

36. CERTAIN Christian Americans

(I'm not Christian)

[progree]

12. Threats in Colorado ... and in Minnesota and elsewhere, they will be election judges & poll workers

... Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold ... "The threats are ongoing," Griswald told CBS News. "They've been ongoing against me since June of 2021... I got an uptick in threats over the last couple of weeks." She estimates that her office has made thousands of referrals to the Justice Department since the 2020 election. ... The lies that the former president and people aligned with him continue to push out are dangerous — they are leading to political violence."

"The 'big lie' is why I have a county working behind bulletproof glass," Griswold continued, referencing new security measures in Salida, the county seat of Chaffee County. "It's the reason that the man who threatened my life is now serving 18 months in prison." '

More: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/colorado-man-accused-of-tampering-with-ballot-marking-machine/ar-AA13K85R?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=f0fc8b994e924205ab40be5f71d6b0f6

In Minnesota -- https://www.democraticunderground.com/105912067

The email from the head of the “Olmsted County Election Integrity” group inviting Jim Anderson to an online training session for election judges looked official. Anderson had served as a judge before, and the email seemed like part of the normal process to prepare him for the 2022 election.

But as he joined the Zoom call, it was clear to him there was nothing normal about the training — and it definitely was not from Olmsted County, which is in charge of training election judges. “They said, well, ‘You know our real president isn’t in office,’” he recalled. “That’s about the time I hit ‘end.’”

Another email from Olmsted County Election Integrity arrived about a week later, this time urging Anderson to rename his smartphone to masquerade as the Wi-Fi network of the polling place where he’d be stationed on Election Day.

The goal, it said, was to capture data being sent over that network and expose an imagined security vulnerability.

The emailer also asked him to photograph vote counting machines and various documents and forward it all to the group’s leader.....

More fun at: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/11/04/election-deniers-in-minnesota-are-training-some-election-judges

Dozens of people who’ve raised doubts about elections to Minnesota County boards over the last year appear on rosters of election judges compiled by APM Reports,

Olmsted County Election Integrity is part of a widespread effort across the country by people who doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 elections and who’ve pushed hard in this election cycle to recruit and install poll workers who share their beliefs.

[jmbar2]

16. "Election Integrity" groups have been deployed in every voting location in the US.

I talked to them while observing ballot processing at my little town Oregon courthouse.

It is a well-funded, nationwide operation run by Cleta Mitchell, one of the most prolific pro-Trump lawsuit lawyers. They have also been doing "door knocking" campaigns to "contact" people they suspect of being illegally registered voters, trying to verify if the voters on the roll actually live there. Creepy.

This is their training manual. They were carrying it with them, following some instructions.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21195360-citizens-guide-to-building-an-election-integrity-infrastructure-november-2021

The goal seems to be to find enough hints of irregularities to tie elections up in lawsuits and cast doubt on local election officials so they can replace them. Big money for Cleta and the Trump lawyers coming in from somewhere...

Do a search on Cleta Mitchell and you will see a lot of press on this operation.

[calimary]

20. They forgot the "my ass" part.

As in “Election Integrity My Ass”.

WHAT “integrity”???

[czarjak]

15. "Kill 'em all", has been a battle cry since forever.

[Mysterian]

17. Not in American elections

FYI

[electric_blue68]

37. Well for Black people it Has be different... though...

(life forbid) murder hasn't happened to many, deep, criminal tragedy it did for some

Others, too, but they've had and still have it the worse. As the repudiation of much if the VRA

[czarjak]

39. 100 years of Jim Crow? Please. BTW.

[appalachiablue]

21. Outrageous, thanks for posting.

[no_hypocrisy]

34. And the Police are doing nothing?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

35. Some of Trump's "Very good people"

[IronLionZion]

40. Ya'll Qaeda, Vanilla ISIS,

These A-holes sound a lot like Hitler's brown shirts roughing up people as needed to help the Nazis gain power. At their peak, they were larger than the German Army. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

[Evolve Dammit]

41. We are becoming a very violent society quickly. They forget we are armed as well. Let the games

begin. We didn't foment or ask for any of this shit. This is totally domestic terrorists spawned by Cult 45. May he be prosecuted and persecuted to the end of time (not just his lifetime, which is waning).

[summer_in_TX]

42. Mobilizations the National Guard to protect polling stations and

election workers, as well as voters occurs to me as quite possibly needed as a response. But that is highly likely to have the effect of suppressing the vote to see armed military out and about.

It's very concerning.

[The Grand Illuminist]

43. Highly doubt it.

Local law enforcement will be used. Using the NG would have indies believing MAGAs were right.